The issue of "civil society" has been receiving greater attention since the end of the Cold War and now appears as a major challenge in most parts of the world. This can be seen by a brief review of the present situation in various regions.

a. In China, for decades the basic structures had been the Party and the masses. Now the initial development of a market economy begins to evoke increasing activity and participation by the many dimensions of society. Neighborhood and village configurations re-quire new structures of engagement in work, education, environment, health, recreation and the like. The mobilization of the populace for effective participation in the new possibilities and activities requires the recognition of multiple and structured solidarities related to the differentiated engagements in life. Beyond simply following uniform directives, it is necessary that all groups contribute from their own experience and respond with creativity to the multiple and diverse challenges of life. The image is that of a sleeping dragon shaking off mechanical motion and beginning verily to dance.

In Central and Eastern Europe a set of teams at the Institutes of Philosophy of the Academies of Science has written a set of eight volumes. These look back into their cultural heritages for resources in this time of change. The publication of this series was followed immediately by a consultation in Smolenize Castle, the Conference Center of the Slovak Academy of Science, of representatives of the teams from the various nations in order to plan the next phase of their work. This, they concluded, should be focused on rebuilding democratic societies with special attention both to the configurations of values which characterize and give strength to their cultures. It should integrate as well the newly evolving pattern of agreed upon human rights which articulate standards and goals for the social reconstruction for our times.

In Latin America in the 70s the tensions of the Cold War had frozen political parties into ideologically opposite extremes. This was reflected in incessant rounds of strikes which paralyzed not only political life, but also labor and hence industries, universities and hence the preparation of the next generation. It drove many beyond the pale of law into guerilla movements which, in turn, linked with drug cartels to generate the terror of violent anarchy. The end of the Cold War undermined not only the credibility of a world movement of liberation

political parties and other institutions. Even confidence in justice has waned, undermined by corruption and the skepticism this entails. What is felt to be desperately needed is a sense of civic responsibility marked by social solidarity, active participation and an order of subsidiarity. Based on this there is need for an educational process capable of raising up a new generation with the moral character which will enable it truly to exercise the new possibilities of freedom. This centers concern on social reconstruction and directs interest to civil society.

In the North Atlantic area there is an emerging awareness of the extent of the change entailed by the end of the Cold War. Not only have the excessive statisms of fascism and communism been rejected, but confidence in the individualist liberal tradition, which had at first been heightened, is now increasingly questioned. By abandoning all social responsibilities, individualism unwittingly generates a massive state which stifles the creative initiative of the various sectors of the populace. Education and welfare are shifted from private to state responsibilities; health faces the dilemma of how to combine private and public capabilities; personal moral stamina and public stability are threatened as society increasingly divides between the rich and the poor, and the increasing sophistication of production and service sectors withdraws job and career opportunities from an increasing proportion of the populace. The ideal of a vibrant and creative populace is in danger of fading into an amorphus and lonely crowd.

All of these descriptions converge in suggesting a common challenge for the last years of the 20th century and preparation for the new millenium, that is, to reintegrate social life after the polarization of the Marxist communist state, on the one hand, and the liberal individual, on the other. This means filling in or activating that social space between the state and the economy which is termed civil society.

Here the challenge is to generate: freedom, social concern and commitment on the part of persons; the various solidarities formed due to age and location, occupation and commitment; and relations of subsidiarity between these solidarities. This must draw upon and reflect, respect and promote the cultural heritages involved.

All of this reflects the hope that life can be both free and social, overcoming the need for authoritarianism; that it can integrate and promote a plurality of cultural resources; that it can work by voluntary association based on proximate involvement and local control; and that it can evolve for the coming ages new modes for living freedom more fully.

These challenges called for three major research components: first, to survey the notion of civil society and to be alert to potential dangers which could be generated by its development; second, to investigate the cultural and value foundations upon which civil society can be developed; and third, to consider the structural components of such a society and their dynamics.

At this point there is a danger that the epochal changes which human life in society is undergoing will be underestimated. It is natural, because relatively easy, to continue to think in terms of the rational, scientific, socio-political models of the past four hundred years of the Enlightenment and to attempt to carry these forward incrementally. But if the above indicates that this model is no longer adequate to the new development in personal and social life, then the increasing thoroughness and intensity of its application can be expected to create ever greater difficulties and even disasters.

The catastrophic world wars both hot and cold and the renewal of ethnic and regional conflicts—indeed genocides—combined with the pervasive development of communications and immigration within and between continents, all suggest that humankind has indeed reached the limits of the modern paradigm. If its advances are to be retained and the new challenges faced it is necessary to deepen our understanding and sensibilities to new levels of meaning and of life.

In terms of consciousness, this is now reflected by the movement of human awareness beyond its prior captivity to mathematic-instrumental reason initiated by Descartes and reflected in the focus upon Kant’s first two critiques centered upon universal laws. Now attention is shifting to the aesthetic dimension in Kant’s third critique with its potential for a new openness to the presently emerging sensibilities to creative imagination, care, concern and culture.

The content of this deepening awareness is reflected para-digmatically in the shift of attention beyond the modern captivity to the political and the economic dimensions of life to civil society as the primary locus of the exercise of human freedom in society and to the tripartite relation between these three.

In the United Nations this deepening of awareness and concern is palpable as attention moves from the Security Council to the summits on ecology (Rio), family (Cairo), women (Beijing), etc. Each of these bespeaks a broad ground swell from neighborhood organizations to NGOs and other modes of responsible citizen participation in issues which effect the quality of life.

One major difficulty at this point of new initiation is the perduring restrictive effects of past habits. Trapped in the old model of mathematical, even quantitative, reason, many fear to move ahead without a "clear definition" of civil society and a plan for obtaining "measurable" results.

But should one attempt to provide a definition of civil society at this early stage of its contemporary renewal or at the beginning the present investigation? Certainly, if one knew ahead of time exactly what one was looking for it would be much easier to identify and organize its components; from an a priori grasp of its nature it would be relatively easy and secure to delineate analytically its necessary and universal characteristics. On the other hand, such an a priori definition would have to depend upon and reflect knowledge and outlooks which either already were possessed in the past or which abstract from the concrete personal exercise of freedom in time. This would hold any work on civil society to patterns relatively unsuited to the new recognition of the person and stifle the human creativity needed to move ahead with the times.

Perhaps more deeply the call for an a priori definition reflects rather the problem than the solution. Modern times are characterized by a devotion to reason which has radical by reduced human horizons to what is clear and distinct either to sense or to intellect. Thus, what Bacon would destroy as "idols," Vico recognized as the accumulated wisdom or culture of a people. Locke proceeded from the supposition of the mind as a blank tablet on which were written ideas solely from the senses and their various reflective permutations. Descartes would put all under doubt except the indubitable intellectual idea of one’s own existence and what could be developed thereupon through a universal mathematics.

The effect was a reduction of philosophy to either the individualist empiricism and random voluntarism of the utilitarian choice of the Anglo-Saxon or the continental communal and necessitarian rationalism typified by Kant, Hegel and Marx. In either case, reason allowed for only a narrow range of evidence: it sought to manage all either as atomic individuals or through universal and necessary laws; rigorously it rejected all else, including any deeper and authentic sense of human freedom. The result was not philosophies seeking a wisdom which would integrate all, but ideologies bent rather upon a reduction of the human spirit and the suppression of all but the chosen realm of idea. The twentieth century has been the natural culmination of the limitations of this approach as attention to society lurched toward into totalitarianism, while attention to the particular person sank rapidly into individualism. After the World War II defeat of Fascism these two divided naturally into the Cold War as a conflict between ideologies.

Now, following the collapse of Marxism in Eastern Europe, it is possible to look back not simply in order to adopt the opposing ideology, but to ask what was omitted in the Age of the Enlightenment which led to such a violent and bloody twentieth century. This should be less a negative process of critiquing and deconstructing the past in terms of post-modernism, than a positive process of reconstructing the future in terms of a new awareness often characterized as global period.

If so then it may be less promising to begin our work on civil society from a definition, which would be limited in content to past vision and in method to an ideological approach, but to reopen the question in a way that makes possible the rediscovery and integration of what was available but rejected in choosing the path of modernity. This corresponds to Heidegger’s notion that the real step forward is not merely an incremental advance along the path already well trodden, but a return to factors which had been available but were not included in the historic modern choice of mathematical and instrumental reason.

This suggests that the present volume begin from and build upon the freedom which marks human action as responsible and creative, and focus upon the characteristics of the exercise of this freedom with regard to social life. This will enable two steps with regard to civil society. The first is to follow its exercise in modern times in order to uncover what has been accomplished there. The second is to take the step backward to culture as the cumulative and integrative exercise of freedom and on that basis to attempt its application, in Gadamer’s sense, to the development of the notion of civil society for the twenty-first century.

Such a project must integrate such painfully achieved advances of the modern period as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But these must free this from being a merely abstract, technical construct in which individuals are enclosed, in order to be appreciated as an unfolding of human freedom as people meet and interact in the various dimensions of life. This will include and build upon the richness of the humanizing cultures which modernity had omitted and often suppressed, and search out new ways of living our freedom with other persons and groups in society.

The effort must transcend the economic order and the exercise of political power, while setting standards and direction for both precisely as humane engagements in the world. Just as we have learned that democracy means that it is important to have civilian control of military and state powers, so we have learned that it is essential that the economy be directed not by a hidden material hand, but by conscious human concern.

The relation then between civil society and the economic and political orders is a major issue to be worked out. In some places the urgent present task is to make room for civil society; in others it may be to revive consciousness of its existence and roles. Beyond both, however, a progressive humanization of life for the next century and millenium will depend upon the way in which civil society, as a mobilization of the freedom of a people, can pervade, transform and inspire all phases of social life. On this complex and integrating task the present interdisciplinary and intercultural team of scholars worked intensively over an extended period of time. This volume is the result of their work.

Hence, a first step here is that of identifying the basic components of free social life and then to trace their history in terms of civil society in modern times. This should make it possible to identify more precisely the new character of the present challenge and the corresponding resources for a response.

But if this effort focuses on the area between state and economy, it is important that this not be in opposition to the two. The nation state was constituted in response to real needs. Further, in the past the notion of government was itself value laden; this source of public convergence in values must be mined, not abandoned. Further, the more recent attention to the pluralistic character of contemporary community life and a positive appreciation of its diversity of values makes the issue of how these are to be lived freely, fully and conjointly central to the task of constructing civil society in our day.

On the other hand, there is concern lest the very focus upon shared values exercise a restraint upon human creativity. Need the commitment to the values of a culture be attenuated in order that diversified creativity might flourish, or can such a commitment itself be a creative force—if so, in what manner and under what conditions?

Where society is moving from a closed system marked by an infallible totalitarian government, social conformity and the sub-ordination of individuality, to an open society marked by attention to the person and by competition, how can one assure social responsibility? This must be not merely a utilitarian ploy dominated by self-interest, but a freely acknowledged dimension of one’s personhood in the varied relations by which one transcends self and lives in and through multiple solidarities.

The value base of civil society needs to be founded not simply in a Kantian deontological framework as a set of conditions for practical reason, but rather in the actual processes of life. Such an Aristotelian teleological framework which identifies the goal or purpose of social life and understands all as properly ordered thereto, ha been elaborated by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum in development theory. From this sense of the common good one can read back, as it were, to civic virtue and to the construction of a global development ethic. In this light the private realm is not merely a realm of egoistic self-interest, but entails multiple relations of solidarity with others, each of which involves public responsibilities first of all to develop intermediate spheres of active participation in the social order and, by implication, to correct conditions of excessive authoritarianism or weakness on the part of the state and of injustice in the economic order .

This involves both persons and groups. As the basic constituent of any society the person is essential but ambiguous, for one can turn inward in a self-centered manner; hence it is important to add that any resolution of the social problem requires that the individual be endowed with moral values. Further, these are not simply functions of external circumstances; indeed the ideological effort to construct in these terms a "new socialist man" proceeded to destroy the inner person. Hence, there is need for an inner reconstruction that includes one’s emotional life as well as intellect and will, and which must be reflected further in the values which guide one’s options and the culture which emerges as the complex of values and virtues of one’s people.

As culture this is not merely proper to an individual, but is developed over time by a group. It becomes the context which endows young people with a capacity to interpret their surroundings and interact socially with others. Hence, an understanding of the resources of social reconstruction requires an ability to access the resources of the oral traditions which bear the fruit of the ages of human experience which preceded writing and laid the foundations of the major cultures. It requires, as well, attention to the role of symbol and ritual and to the new hermeneutic understandings of how these manifest and reinforce a culture and its values. Here may lie important keys to exclusivist attitudes between cultures, as well as to their ability to relate positively to one another in facing contemporary challenges.

Structure can be approached both negatively and positively. Negatively, one can analyze cases of overpowering state domination which have suppressed freedom; this implies a need to develop of a set of additional structures in order to enable the life of civil society. One could also analyze the recent dynamics regarding the notion of sovereignty in order to follow the actual processes. This gradually deconstructs claims of exclusivity as the presence of different groups comes to be acknowledged.

Positively, one can look at the way in which concrete situations call for particular configurations of solidarity and subsidiarity, or one could investigate the nature of these configurations.

This could focus on a particular dimension such as that of the family in terms of the conjugal union. It might be a more general study of the way in which a shared culture generates order through local communities and informal mechanisms. Or, finally it might be possible to consider the general issue of a third social order (or "third way") distinct from the two classical Western models of liberalism and socialism.

All of these elements are involved in the redevelopment of civil society as a process of social reconstruction. There integrated study is the goal of this work.

George F. McLean